The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Two Years of Change

A couple of weeks ago marked the end of our second year on the farm.  The changes that have occurred in the past two years are striking when viewed from a distance....


First year drawing
"Sept. 2007 ---
  • Water pumped from creek to tower, flows into house and garden. 
  • Corn, beans, squash, lettuce, okra, greens, and thousands of tomatoes. 
  • A ramshackle clothesline, attached at one end to the electric pole, at the other end to a stump. 
  • Chicken tractors three, eating weeds, laying eggs. 
  • Lucy, waiting on her master, beside the Ubiquitous Red Bucket. 
  • A house with brake lights."


Second year drawing

"Sept. 2008 --- Sinking Creek year two ---
  • Our reach has expanded into three garden patches, grapes, berries, trees (only peaches thriving.)  Our freezer is 3/4 full with garden produce.
  • Our flock has shrunk --- five hens, a rooster, and seven pullets.  Mark has built a Cadillac chicken tractor with wheels.  Huckleberry and Lucy still reign.
  • Our amenities have steadily improved.  The red bucket has made way for a pump and thousand gallon tank.  We drink treated water from the well.  Our wood furnace keeps us warm.
  • The Club Car is the new star of the show, effortlessly (and silently) whizzing up the driveway.  The truck has been hauled off to the crusher.
  • Our trials and tribulations --- fencing out deer, not enough hours in the day.
  • Our joys --- a perfectly redesigned kitchen, growing veggies I've never grown before (peppers, watermelon, eggplant), lightning bugs, each other..."



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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I just started back at the very beginning. It's like catching an entire show on Netflix from beginning to end. :)

I have always enjoyed keeping up with what you guys are doing.

Comment by Daniel Dessinger Mon Feb 8 23:19:43 2016





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